Dawn. Three hours after departure.

The road to Eclipse was a graveyard of old hopes.

Burnt-out vehicles lined the cracked asphalt, their skeletons rusted and hollow. Telephone poles leaned at impossible angles, their wires long since stripped for scrap. And everywhere, the smell: ash, iron, and something sweet, like rotting fruit.

Julian stopped at the crest of a low hill. Before him, the Eclipse stronghold rose from the Plains like a black thorn jammed into the earth’s flesh. Walls of reinforced concrete, thirty feet high, topped with razor wire and sensor arrays. Guard towers at hundred-meter intervals. And behind it all, the central spire, pulsing with that ominous crimson glow.

"The outer wall has four gates," Vex said, crouching beside him. She pointed to each in turn. "North, south, east, west. Each gate has a platoon of regulars, maybe fifty soldiers. But the real defense is the kill zone." She gestured to the open ground between the hill and the wall. "No cover for three hundred meters. Anyone who crosses gets lit up by automated turrets and snipers."

Emma squinted. "I can take out the turrets."

"You’ll be exposed."

"I’m fireproof."

Fey tapped her data-slate. "Not against armor-piercing rounds. Those turrets look like .50 cal. They’ll punch through your flames and through you."

Emma pouted. "Fine. What’s your brilliant idea?"

Fey pointed to the eastern wall, where the terrain dipped into a dry riverbed. "The drainage tunnel. It’s narrow, flooded, and probably infested. But it comes out inside the eastern barracks. I saw it in Xlomoph’s structural archives."

Vex shook her head. "Too risky. If they’ve blocked it—"

"They haven’t." Fey’s voice was flat. "Darwin’s confident. He wants us to come through the gates. He won’t waste manpower sealing a tunnel he thinks we don’t know about."

Julian studied the wall, the towers, the crimson light.

"Zoe."

She stepped forward, her golden eyes reflecting the dawn.

"The drainage tunnel. Can you scout it?"

Zoe nodded once. She dropped to all fours, her body rippling, black fur sprouting, bones realigning. Within seconds, the massive wolf stood where the woman had been. She moved silently down the hill, a shadow among shadows, and disappeared into the riverbed.

The waiting began.

Emma sat on a broken chunk of concrete and hummed an old song. Dori checked and rechecked her pistol, her hands steady now. Fey traced patterns on her data-slate, her blue hair falling across her face. Vex paced, her jaw tight.

Julian stood motionless, his eyes never leaving the wall.

Ten minutes.

Twenty.

Thirty.

Then a soft chuff from the riverbed. Zoe emerged, shaking water from her fur. She shifted back, her clothes drenched but her expression calm.

"The tunnel is open," she said. "It empties into a storage room behind the eastern barracks. I heard voices, maybe twenty soldiers, sleeping or eating. They don’t expect anyone from that direction."

Julian turned to Vex. "We split. You take the main force to the north gate. Feint. Draw their attention."

"And you?"

Julian’s eyes moved to the eastern wall.

"We go through the tunnel. Hit the barracks. Take the eastern gate from inside. Then we open it for the rest of you."

Vex’s lips pressed into a thin line. "That’s a lot of trust."

"You’ve earned it."

For a moment, something flickered in Vex’s hard eyes. She nodded.

"Signal when the gate is open. Three flashes of red light."

Julian raised his hand. A tiny spark of crimson lightning danced between his fingers. "Red light."

Vex turned to her Greenday fighters. "You heard him. North gate. We make noise. We draw fire. We don’t die until they open the door for us."

The fighters murmured their assent, gripping their weapons.

"Move out."

Vex led her column down the hill, circling wide to approach the north gate. Julian watched them go, then turned to his team.

"Emma, Fey, Dori, Zoe. Stay close to me. Dori, conserve your Conceal until we’re inside. We’ll need it for the courtyard."

Dori nodded, her hand resting on her pistol.

Julian descended into the riverbed.

The drainage tunnel was exactly as Zoe had described: narrow, dark, and ankle-deep in foul water. The ceiling dripped with condensation. The walls were graffitied with old symbols, warnings, prayers to gods no one believed in anymore.

Julian walked first, his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

The tunnel curved left, then right, then opened into a larger space.

The storage room. Crates of supplies, boxes of ammunition, a few sleeping bags on the floor. And twenty Eclipse soldiers, just as Zoe had said.

They were lounging, eating, playing cards. None of them saw the shadows moving at the edge of their vision. None of them heard the soft splash of footsteps in the water.

Julian raised his hand.

[Domination].

"Sleep."

Twenty pairs of eyes went blank. Twenty bodies slumped, unconscious before they hit the ground.

Emma blinked. "That’s... unsettling."

"Efficient," Julian corrected. He stepped over the sleeping soldiers and pushed open the door to the barracks.

The eastern barracks was a long, single-story building lined with bunk beds. More soldiers, maybe thirty, most of them still in their bunks. The morning shift hadn’t started yet.

Julian didn’t bother with subtlety.

[Lightning].

A blue-white arc jumped from his palm to the nearest fusebox. The lights flickered and died. Alarms began to blare.

"Now," Julian said.

Emma threw her hands forward. Fire erupted from her palms, not aimed at the soldiers, but at the ceiling, the walls, the floor. The barracks became an inferno in seconds. Soldiers scrambled out of their bunks, choking on smoke, blinded by heat.

Fey raised her hand. From the water pipes overhead, high-pressure jets burst free, sending geysers of water across the burning room. Not to put out the fire, but to create steam, thick and impenetrable.

Dori raised her pistol and fired through the steam. Each shot found a target. She didn’t miss.

Zoe shifted and tore through the confusion, her golden eyes sighting through the haze and steam. Claws, teeth, speed.

Julian walked through the chaos like a ghost. Any soldier who came near him was met with Gravity, crushed to the floor, or Lightning, convulsing. He didn’t slow.

Thirty seconds later, the barracks was silent except for the crackle of flames and the drip of water.

Emma extinguished her fire. The steam began to clear.

The eastern gate was fifty meters ahead. Its control room was a small bunker built into the wall.

Fey reached it first. She pressed her palm against the blast door.

[Liquid].

The metal flowed like water, opening a hole just large enough to step through. Inside, two technicians stared at her with wide eyes.

"Open the gate," Fey said.

They didn’t argue.

The massive iron doors groaned, grinding against their tracks, parting slowly to reveal the dawn beyond.

Julian stepped to the edge of the wall. He raised his hand. Three pulses of crimson lightning shot into the sky.

Red light. Red light. Red light.

On the north side of the stronghold, Vex saw the signal.

"Now!" she roared.

Her Greenday fighters surged forward, pouring through the open eastern gate, into the courtyard where Eclipse soldiers were still scrambling to respond.

The battle for Eclipse had begun.